Manufacturing of products includes processing of subassemblies at multiple production stations with each station designated, for instance, to one or more of assembly, testing, branding, and configuration. Many products to be assembled include multiple subassemblies, one or more of which are capable of being configured in multiple ways. Configuration may occur at any stage of a manufacturing process, for instance, of a subassembly prior to or during incorporation into a product, or of a fully assembled product. Frequently, the existing configuration of a product needs to be verified and possibly altered to a desired configuration before the product can be shipped to a particular customer or destination.
Pre-shipment configuration verification requires access to data associated with both the existing configuration and the desired configuration to allow for a comparison. The desired configuration may include private labeling, or a downgrade of software installed on the product, for example, so that a customer can purchase spare or replacement products compatible with products previously purchased. The desired configuration may further include aspects such as configuring a radio product to operate within a permissible frequency band depending on the target destination. In addition, a seller of a product may often want to customize the configuration of a product to conform to the customer's licensing terms of software installed on the product.
If the desired and existing configurations do not match, the product typically needs to be reconfigured. To avoid mistakes, it is further desirable to verify the configuration of the product again following reconfiguration.
Some products include technology in particularly skilled areas. Examples of skilled areas of technology include radio frequency and microwave technologies in products such as microwave radios, medical devices such as X-ray, CAT (computed axial tomography) or MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines, or fiber optics systems. Errors in the configuration of a product may result, after shipment, in unacceptable performance, liability for failing to conform to regulations or standards, or other anticipated or unanticipated problems. In some skilled areas of technology, such as those involved in medical devices, errors may cause physical harm.
Therefore, there is a need to consider the foregoing in the design of manufacturing systems and methods and the benefit of verifying configurations and of reconfiguring products following manufacturing, such as prior to shipment. One desired aspect of such design might be to substantially increase accessibility of data and software used for such verification and reconfiguration purposes.